Buy a War Bond, Sign a Bomber
In memory of their mother, Josephine Siembor Omilian, Susan and her siblings self-published a booklet about their mother’s World War II service. Her brother Frank wrote and researched the fifteen-page piece while Susan worked on layout and production design. The booklet was given to Josephine’s family as a gift in December 2005.
Here’s what Frank wrote as an introduction to the booklet:
I knew the short story of my mother signing the bomber from things she had told us about it over the years and from the other photos in her album from that day. A few more details surfaced in the months before her death, at 84, in December, 2003, because two of her nieces had asked her questions about the war and her war job. She promised them copies of the bomber photo, pulled the negative from her well-organized files and had me make copies of the picture for her to pass around the family. The day before she died, she handed me the remaining six copies of the photo and a list of who they were for. It was left to me to finish the job and to tell the story.
This is a great example of how a family can work together
on a memory piece.